She's terse. I can be terse. Once in flight school, I was laconic.

Wash ,'War Stories'


Natter 40: The Nice One  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


dw - Nov 17, 2005 6:28:58 pm PST #5083 of 10006
Silence means security silence means approval

Santorum

I'm the only person on this planet who thinks "Santorum" looks like "Suntory."

For relaxing times... make it Santorum time.


Trudy Booth - Nov 17, 2005 6:30:49 pm PST #5084 of 10006
Greece's financial crisis threatens to take down all of Western civilization - a civilization they themselves founded. A rather tragic irony - which is something they also invented. - Jon Stewart

Anyone good at probability out there?

Odds are good.


juliana - Nov 17, 2005 6:31:46 pm PST #5085 of 10006
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I miss them all tonight…

But of course! Maybe ikea too!

Whee!


Matt the Bruins fan - Nov 17, 2005 6:33:13 pm PST #5086 of 10006
"I remember when they eventually introduced that drug kingpin who murdered people and smuggled drugs inside snakes and I was like 'Finally. A normal person.'” —RahvinDragand

Woot! Just got back from seeing a performance by the touring Broadway company of Twyla Tharp's Moving Out. The dancers were great, particularly the one who played Eddie. I was disappointed at first when I found out it was a night that the second string pianist was playing, but as it turned out he was SO bad they replaced him with with headliner Darren Holden at intermission. I think I may like Holden's take on some of the songs better than Billy Joel's.


aurelia - Nov 17, 2005 6:38:28 pm PST #5087 of 10006
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story. Tell me a story.

I KNOW!!!

They look so pretty. I will be taping. That last scene between Abby and Luka... I think I've lived that. Not with Goran, sadly, but still...


Emily - Nov 17, 2005 6:39:58 pm PST #5088 of 10006
"In the equation E = mc⬧, c⬧ is a pretty big honking number." - Scola

Here's the question:

In a lottery in which the ratio of losing tickets to the number of winning tickets is 39:1, how many tickets should one buy to give oneself even odds of winning a prize?

At first I thought this was one of those "How many rolls of the dice before there's an even chance of getting a 6" questions, but it's not multiple trials, just one. Shouldn't the answer be... uh. 20?


DXMachina - Nov 17, 2005 6:49:51 pm PST #5089 of 10006
You always do this. We get tipsy, and you take advantage of my love of the scientific method.

20 sounds correct to me. Each ticket has one chance in forty to win, so to make the odds even, you'd need twenty chances at it.

A better analogy than dice would be a roulette wheel without the 0 and 00 holes.


billytea - Nov 17, 2005 6:51:40 pm PST #5090 of 10006
You were a wrong baby who grew up wrong. The wrong kind of wrong. It's better you hear it from a friend.

At first I thought this was one of those "How many rolls of the dice before there's an even chance of getting a 6" questions, but it's not multiple trials, just one. Shouldn't the answer be... uh. 20?

If there are only 40 tickets and one winner. But what if there are 40,000 tickets and 1,000 winners? Since they didn't specify the number of tickets, you don't have the information to determine the impact on subsequent purchases of previous ones. Therefore, I think they're most likely expecting you to treat it as if each ticket is an independent trial, i.e. the "How many rolls of the dice" deal.


Emily - Nov 17, 2005 6:54:19 pm PST #5091 of 10006
"In the equation E = mc⬧, c⬧ is a pretty big honking number." - Scola

Of course, it's also true that saying the ratio is 39:1 could mean 390:10, in which case... well, in which case there's really no way for me to know how many tickets to buy. Okay, I think 20 is really the way to go here. Seems way too simple for the chapter, but there you are.


DXMachina - Nov 17, 2005 6:55:33 pm PST #5092 of 10006
You always do this. We get tipsy, and you take advantage of my love of the scientific method.

Therefore, I think they're most likely expecting you to treat it as if each ticket is an independent trial, i.e. the "How many rolls of the dice" deal.

Doesn't that still come out to twenty?